No Fixed Abode

by Charlie Carroll

  'It's nice when it's like this,' she said. 'I've been homeless a while, but this is my favourite place. People get on here.'

  'There was a fight the night before I arrived.'

  'Don't pay any attention to that. It doesn't happen much.'

  'Ian said it happens all the time.'

  Diana looked over at Ian, who was rolling a joint while Greg stood in front of him and blocked him from view of the traffic. 'You shouldn't believe everything Ian says. He's a lovely boy, but he drinks too much, and it makes him wild. You seem to drink a lot, too.'

  'I'm just trying to fit in,' I lied. 'We all drink too much here. You drink too much.'

  'No, I don't,' Diana said, picking up the bottle of wine. 'I'll have half of this, and I won't have any more. I'll go to bed. Greg can have the rest.'

  Diana did drink her half, but when Greg swallowed his last cup he produced another bottle from the tent, and Diana gladly let him fill her glass. I had already noticed that Greg and Marek could drink and smoke for twelve hours without any noticeable effect, while Diana and Ian grew inebriated after just a few. The latter was already sprinting widths across the three-lane road before us, weaving in between the slow-moving rush-hour traffic while Greg cheered him on from the pavement. Diana, on the other hand, had become maudlin and solipsistic.

  'I don't think people understand what it's like for us here… they all think it's an easy way out, but it's not… it's not easy at all… I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be… I'd be back in Brazil… I lived there for two years… always said I'd return… but I've got my court case, and there's nothing I can do… when I get my daughter back, she'd like you, when I get her back… she wants to go to Brazil, but he won't let her… if we could live out there together, now, that would be easy… but not this… but no one knows that… they shout at us and make jokes… what do they know?… that's why what you're doing is good… I write a lot, too… hey, Greg!'

  Greg turned from his earnest conversation with Ian, who rocked back and forth on his heels, impatient at the interruption. 'What?'

  'You should take Charlie to Victoria Square. Introduce him to some people there.'

  Greg laughed without mirth. 'Nah, I ain't doing that.'

  'Why not?' she remonstrated.

  'I just ain't.'

  'Why not? It'd be good for his book.'

  Greg looked at her. 'You think I'm gonna go down there and tell them there's a writer wants to speak to them?' He laughed again, and then turned his attention to me. 'You go down there,' he said, 'and they won't talk to you. They won't tell you anything. They'll just try and get you pissed and stoned. And then…'

  'But he needs material for his book,' Diana continued.

  'It's all right,' I interrupted. 'I don't need it.'

  'Got enough from us, have you?' Greg said, sitting down next to me. There was a look in his eyes, a quiver in his lips, which I did not like. 'Let me ask you this, Undercover,' he said, 'you're writing a book about tramps, right?'

  'Yes,' I replied. I felt the lager begin to churn uneasily in my stomach, and noticed that Ian was no longer staring at the traffic, but was instead staring at me with an expression I could not decipher.

  'All right,' Greg said. 'All right, Undercover. So tell me this. How do you define a tramp?'

  I considered the question. There was an edge to it, and I knew that a thoughtless response could cost me. 'I think a tramp is someone who has purposefully taken to the road.'

  Greg nodded in approval. 'That's good,' he said. 'Yeah. But you do know, don't you, that writing your book, you're gonna meet people, people you might not want to know. People who can take you down into…' He paused, searching for the right expression, finally settling on an unnerving cliché. '… a den of iniquity.'

  Ian was still watching me. Marek had opened his eyes. Diana had turned her head to face the traffic. I felt suddenly sick, and perhaps it showed, for Greg laughed.

  'I don't mean anyone's gonna kill you, bruv,' he said. 'Not physically.'

  What the fuck did that mean?

  'But it's you, mate. You. Your whole demeanour. Your voice. You're obviously not one of us. And people will react to that. You know?'

  Greg was no longer sitting. His knees had pushed him up into an awkward crouch which tilted him heavily towards me. His right hand was in his jacket pocket; his left reached out and picked up the empty wine bottle. It slipped unsteadily in his loose grip. 'You know?' he repeated.

  Ian's voice broke like a wave over us. 'Fuck… this!' he shouted, and ran down along the line of tents to the western aspect of the square. Greg dropped the bottle, which clanged with a jarring resonance on the flagstones, and rose to his feet. Diana and Marek were quick to follow. I remained seated, frozen to my spot.

  'Ian, what the fuck?' Greg shouted.

  'Ian, get down from there!' Diana called.

  Marek laughed.

  I turned around to see Ian scaling the statue of Robert Peel. As he reached the figure's platform, he sat astride it, wrapping one arm around one of the statue's legs and gesturing with his other arm for one of us to throw up his can of rum and coke. We clustered around the monument's base as he hung from Peel's leg and called to the universe: 'What's underneath when you peel back the black from the black man?'

  The two security wardens approached and called for Ian to come down. He ignored them. Perhaps satisfied that they had done their duty, they then produced mobile phones from their pockets and took pictures of him.

  'What happens?' Ian continued to shout. 'What happens when you peel back the black from a black man? What's underneath? What happens?'

  Then the police arrived.

  11

  We scattered like cats. Greg disappeared first, followed by Diana and Marek. Ian nimbly vaulted down from the statue and walked the long way around the square to the Rainbow Tent. I had the shortest distance to cross, but as I unzipped my tent I looked up to see that everybody else was already inside their own.

  The police van drove once around the square and then came to a rest beside my tent. I sat in the porch, making a pretence of tying my shoelaces. Two officers appeared at the opening. They did not bend down.

  'All right, mate?' came a voice from somewhere above their knees.

  I lurched out and rose to my feet, careful not to stand too close to the two officers for fear that my breath reeked of alcohol.

  'All right?' the policeman repeated, looking me up and down with a casual half-smirk.

  'Good evening, officer,' I replied. 'Is there a problem? Can I rectify it?' If, as Greg suggested, I really did have a plum in my mouth, it seemed to ooze politesse and verbosity whenever directed at the police. I regaled myself with the conclusion that I liked to confuse them, that the last thing they would expect to hear from this street-dwelling tramp was articulate eloquence. But I wonder now, in hindsight, if it was born of some fundamental shame, a kind of code for: Don't arrest me, I'm not one of them.

  'You can't stay here,' he said.

  'May I ask why? I've spent myriad days here already, and I've caused no harm nor trouble.' If such ridiculous language came from shame, the shame is all mine now as I report it.

  'See this?' The policeman gestured at the section of fence between my tent and the lawn. 'This is the entrance for the construction workers. We need to keep it clear so they can drive in.'

  'I've had this conversation with the security wardens.' I noticed the mute officer roll his eyes at that appellation. 'They even helped me move my tent around so I wouldn't be causing an obstruction. So far, I've obstructed nobody.'

  'Have any workers driven in while you've been here?'

  'No, but I'm well away from the entrance. I can't see how my tent could possibly cause a problem.'

  'Well, it is causing a problem, isn't it? I've just told you.'

  I considered my options. I could argue centimetres and inches, but I could tell from the staunch expression on this policeman's face that he had picked his fight, and that no mat
ter what I said I would lose. He had decided to move me on.

  'I'll put my tent over there,' I said, gesturing to a spot next to Marek's tent which had been freed up two nights before.

  'No can do. You've got to move.'

  'But I've got nowhere else to go,' I lied. 'If I pack up now, I'm just going to end up sleeping rough on the Strand.'

  'Sorry, mate. It's the law.'

  'No,' I said, 'no, it's not. The law says we have a right to protest here. The House of Lords passed it.'

  'The law says that they can protest here,' he replied, pointing over at the Peace Box and the Brian Haw tents. 'What exactly are you protesting against?'

  I changed tack. 'I've been to St Mungo's in Camden. I've been to the Homeless Unit at the Charing Cross police station.' The name-drops had no discernible effect. 'At the latter in particular, I was told that the primary purpose of Westminster's police force regarding homelessness is to reduce the number of rough sleepers each night. I asked if this place, Democracy Village, counted as rough sleeping. I was told that, technically, it didn't. Technically, the people here have shelter. Technically, we're not rough sleeping. Aren't I doing you a favour by sleeping here and not on the street?'

  The policeman laughed, though not without friendliness. 'No,' he said. 'No, you're not doing me a favour.'

  'Look,' I remonstrated. 'It's half seven. It's getting dark. No construction workers are coming here tonight, are they? Just let me spend the night here, and I promise I'll be gone in the morning.'

  The policeman turned to his colleague and uttered something inaudible. He turned back to me. 'I'm due back here tomorrow afternoon. Two, three o'clock. If you're still here, I'll arrest you.'

  I was prepared to go only so far with my tramping, and my remit did not include arrest. At seven o'clock the next morning, I packed up my things and left, leaving a note and a few cans of lager outside the Rainbow Tent for Ian. Above the beginnings of the Central London morning rush-hour traffic, I could hear him snoring inside.

  12

  I had slept well that night for, within an hour of the police's departure from Parliament Square, I had decided on my next and final sleeping-spot. Thanks to those morning Metros and late-afternoon London Evening Standards passed on to me with unwavering regularity by Greg, I had for some time, and with some interest, been reading about another impromptu city campsite which had planted itself outside St Paul's Cathedral and then grown exponentially each day. It was, from what I read, for I had not personally visited it, a fundamentally political protest, with no homeless contingent as flaunted at Parliament Square, and though this did not interest me as such, I was not yet ready to go home, and this was still, to some extent, another way of living on the streets.

  The Occupy London movement began in October 2011, as a gesture of solidarity to the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York and a number of other offshoots in capital cities across the world. A non-violent protest and demonstration against a number of issues – among them, social injustice, economic inequality, the rise of unemployment and the decline of affordable housing – the original intent of the occupiers was to build an encampment in Paternoster Square outside the London Stock Exchange. Getting wind of the planned demonstration, perhaps from the Facebook campaign which started it, the police got there first and sealed off the entrances to Paternoster Square, citing its private-property status as their lawful reasoning. Spreading out from the barred entrance, the protesters – some three thousand of them – gathered outside the adjacent St Paul's Cathedral. Searching for an alternative, they realised it was right beneath their feet – public land – and a hundred tents were pitched outside the cathedral within an hour, where they remained for the next four months.

  I arrived in the first of those four months, and already over two hundred tents sat in neat blocks and lines across the square and down around the side of the cathedral, demarcatory avenues snaking between them to create a surprising orderliness amongst the proliferation. 'Welcome to Tent City!' an occupier called out to me, patting the pop-up on my back and then disappearing into the crowds before I could ask him where to pitch.

  It was all a far cry from my last spot, closer perhaps to the Glastonbury Festival than the Parliament Square protest, filled with large marquees advertising live music and DJ sets on propped-up chalkboards, one tent even housing an upright piano with a young girl tapping out a lurching Chopin number across its keys; impromptu games of football and other irreverent alternatives where the ball was bounced heavily against the walls of the cathedral; short theatre performances; synchronised dances; face-painting; a cinema; four Portaloos (always 'Out of Order'); a first-aid tent; an information and reception zone; free tea and coffee; free meals from the large canteen; and a meditation tent lit by hanging bulbs which were powered by free-standing solar panels.

  Many of those who strolled amongst the tents were curious tourists, but the supporters were conspicuous with their badges and warm clothing, their flyers and, sometimes, masks. Some were foreign, some were older 'lefties', some were ageless and dreadlocked, but most were young men without jobs. It soon became easy to spot who stayed overnight and who did not: the day-supporters were often determined and angry; but the real occupiers who slept in their uncomfortable tents each night spent their days in camping chairs supping from styrofoam cups of coffee and discussing anything that came to mind. 'Do you want me to teach you English?' came a voice from the tents as I passed. These people seemed to have all the time in the world.

  Spaces became discernible amongst the clusters of tents as I sauntered up and down the makeshift alleyways. Former occupiers had evidently left these perfectly sized pitches and not returned, though others were already arriving. Three men were building an old-fashioned tent out of rusty poles and moth-eaten canvas on the brink of a rectangular settlement.

  'Who do I speak to about pitching up?' I asked.

  'What do you think this is, a campsite?' one wheezed as the wind caught his section of canvas and ripped his arms skyward.

  I looked around at the two hundred tents and resisted the urge to sarcasm. 'Yes,' I said.

  'Pitch wherever you fucking well want.'

  Wherever I wanted seemed discordant. This clearly was a campsite, an ordered one at that, and I had no inclination of lying down where I would only be in the way. I noticed the large and battered tent of my interlocutor was beginning to protrude out on to the walkway beyond the invisible line against which all its neighbours had been pitched.

  'You didn't ask anyone, then?' I said. 'You just set up?'

  'Who am I going to ask? The Dean?'

  'I'm looking forward to living near you,' I replied.

  He scowled at me and then set his attention back to the tent, which had inflated like a hot-air balloon and looked ready to carry all three of them off into the torrid London air.

  That evening, those three men were asked to take down their tent and move over to the Finsbury Park site since they were obstructing the public walkway. They had not understood the unwritten regulations of this place, but I had – this demonstration was perceptibly British, from its structured disposition to its neat classifiability to its determination that it would take place over the most inclement months of the North Atlantic calendar. I had no inclination to step on any toes, no wish to ignore the simple needs for space and order in this place which, though novel and unprecedented, was peopled by those with an innate loathing of chaos.

  I asked four separate people where I could pitch my tent, but none knew. The last referred me to the information and reception zone, but no one there could tell me, either. I decided to try one last time. He seemed a likely candidate, stepping from his own tent and then walking up and down before the cathedral bearing a placard which read: THIS IS NOT A PROTEST. THIS IS A RIGHT.

  I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. 'Excuse me,' I said. 'Do you know whereabouts I could pitch?'

  He looked at me as if he was Jesus. 'It would not be my place to tell you where you ca
n go.'

  The answer took me by surprise. 'How about you just let me know where I can't pitch.'

  'It would not be my place to tell you where you can't go,' he replied. He was young and stylish, with groomed stubble, a nose-ring, a suit jacket over a logoed orange T-shirt and expensive-looking jeans.

  'I just don't want to be getting in anyone's way. You stay here, right?'

  'Stay is not a word I regularly use.' His answers were becoming evermore evasive, and evermore infuriating with it.

  'That tent over there.' I pointed at the green dome he had appeared from. 'Did you sleep in it last night?'

  'I did,' he said with a slow smile. I realised I detested him.

  'Right. So you stay here. Like I said, I don't want to get in anyone's way. So where do you think would be best for me?'